


Summer (the Prologue)

by CrabOfDoom



Series: Summer (an Awkward FFXV Teen Romance) [1]
Category: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Other, Teen Romance, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 05:59:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11396733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrabOfDoom/pseuds/CrabOfDoom
Summary: The set-up of an imperial blind date in Galdin Quay.





	Summer (the Prologue)

"You want him?" Ardyn asked.

Much as he expected, the young soldier looked at him quizzically. An animalistic tilt of the head, even. Ardyn chose his words for their straightforwardness, however, and Safay soon worked out enough of a grasp on them to comprehend the question.

"What I want is immaterial," Safay recited. Hadn't Hojo and Verstael told him that often enough? Wasn't that everyone's response to the projects?

"Not today," Ardyn assured him, almost kindly. "Not for this. You could well be useful to me--to the emperor--if you answer honestly. And I know you, Safay: you like to be useful, don't you?"

"Yes," the soldier answered in a small voice.

"Good boy. Now, tell me, Safay, of our young Lord Ravus: do you want him?"

"Yes."

"To what end?"

"I-I don't know," Safay shrugged. "I just want to touch him; to know he's real."

"Do you ever think of him touching you?"

"...sometimes."

"Would you allow it?" Ardyn asked, "if I told you it was possible?"

Safay merely stared at him and blinked. It wasn't often that he found himself too petrified to move.

"I have a proposal for you, my boy," Ardyn said. "It's important to the future of the empire that the Oracle stay protected under our guardianship. If she stays, our young Ravus will stay, as well. Yet, the lad has potential to be a much greater asset to the empire, than just a moping brother, shadowing his sister from town to town, as if imperial guards weren't enough to keep her safe. Specifically, he's already received training in his homeland to prepare him to be a swordsman and a leader, and it would be such a shame to let that training go to waste. The emperor wants to further it, by having the lad enter into the imperial army."

"This is where you could do a great service to your homeland, Safay," Ardyn continued. "Ravus is about your age, and young men like him, well, they become very interested in... companionship. Having a friendly body within arm's reach would no doubt keep his spirits up as his training advances. As his superior in seniority, you could even train him, personally. Work him hard. Challenge him. Push him. And then, reward him. However he desires. However _you_ desire."

The vacancy in Safay's eyes that Ardyn had come to expect, whenever the boy wasn't actively under orders or solving a problem, was soon filled with the light of possibilities. It appeared he wasn't immune to pubescent hormones, although without any formal education on the subject, the gods only knew what instinct was suggesting he and the deposed prince should do with one another.

"But," Safay said after a moment, "he never looks at me. The one time he did, he just... made a face, and looked away in disgust."

"You're usually caked in dirt and dried blood, my boy," Ardyn said. "Sane people tend to be put off by gangly harbingers of death, that smell like open graves."

"Oh," Safay sighed, as he deflated somewhat in defeat, certain that neither the death nor blood spatter that followed him like a second shadow were going to change. "Hojo says I wasn't made to be noticed."

"Oh, tut-tut," Adryn chided gently. "On that count, he is very much mistaken."

He stepped closer to the soldier, and two fingertips beneath a delicate chin lifted Safay's gaze up to meet the chancellor's. Safay let a glint of satisfaction show in his sea-green eyes at the insinuation that Hojo could actually be wrong about anything. That someone above Hojo would actually say so.

"I can help you there," Ardyn offered. "Not as a chancellor, but... as a friend."

"You can? You _would?_ "

A smirk broadened Ardyn's lips.

"I will try to be blunt, Safay," he said, as he began to walk a slow circle around the young soldier. "You possess a body of fine muscle, and a pleasant face to go with it. However, neither can be seen well at all, beneath a week's, a month's worth of blood and grime. You don't take care of yourself as well as others expect you should, and they notice. Our young Ravus notices."

"Born to a royal family," Ardyn continued, "he's used to a certain level of luxury from the things around him. An assassin willing to lie in the mud for camouflage is not that. At least, not in his presence. Whenever you might cross his path, you should strive to be at your finest, Safay. As soon as you return from a mission, released from debriefing, you're in a shower. Body, face, hair, teeth, clothing. _Everything_ clean. Posture straight. At attention. Arms down. Shoulders back. No fidgeting."

"A proud beauty," Ardyn summarized, a slight purr under his words. "A silver swan, with that long neck of yours, eh? A creature the young man would gladly pet, and beckon to his side. You needn't follow him like a dog, but be available when he calls for you. Only orders from the emperor or myself are to take you from his side, if Lord Ravus has not dismissed you, himself. Not even Glauca's. Clear, my boy?"

"Yes, sir," Safay nodded.

"Good. Come." Ardyn twice waggled a finger to tell the young soldier to follow him.

The chancellor led Safay from the parlor and through his private bedchamber. Most anyone else in Niflheim would have been surprised or scandalized to be in such an intimate setting with a man whose authority and political power was beneath only Aldercapt, himself. Safay gave it no real thought, beyond noting potential exits and possible blinds that could hide an assassin. It was highly unlikely that one would get this far into the Keep, and the mental mapping was more of a habit to seek out spots where Safay could conceal himself to mount an ambush.

Ardyn removed his draping coat in one lazy, sweeping motion. The considerable mountain of fabric crumpled over the corner of the bed, and the chancellor's casual stride carried him on into his quarters' master bathroom.

Luxury was not something Safay paid much attention, but the bathroom's level was impossible to ignore. Safay was used to tiles, maybe metal panels, but every wall and surface here was a solid sheet of dark gray stone. 'Pale black' felt more appropriate, if such a thing existed. Most places Safay had ever been seemed to share the emperor's affinity for white, with touches of red and gold. Ardyn was apparently not one of them, surrounding himself in this room he used every day with black, steel and platinum.

Too each their own, Safay supposed, but it somehow felt as subtly out of place as a new detective novel amid an entire wall of leather-bound legal tomes. One could reason that it belonged, yet it clearly stood out as different. Much as the chancellor looked in the imperial court, now that he thought about it.

Before an enormous mirror above the marble sink, Ardyn made an absent show of checking that his haphazard hair was just as he wanted it. His left hand motioned toward a large glass shower in the corner.

"Take out your braid, strip, get in," Ardyn instructed. He kept an eye on the soldier's reflection, as his attention appeared to shift to his ever-present stubble. "Use whatever you like. Take all the time you need. If we're going to make a decent consort out of you, I want to see just what I'm working with."

\---------------

"A trip away from Niflheim to the warmth of the sea," Ardyn spoke up, as he turned the car down a winding dirt road that would ultimately lead to Galdin's shoreline, "and still so tense and sullen, my lad?"

Ravus didn't give him the courtesy of glancing his way to acknowledge the question. He wanted to shake the chancellor by the neck and scream his demands to know why everyone expected him to welcome this 'new life' with open arms. Why he was expected to just get over that his homeland had been invaded and his mother, murdered. Why he was expected to be fine with whole weeks passing in between his chances to see his sister, his last living family. He'd been wanting that desperately, for over a year now. It would certainly do nothing to keep his sister safe, nor to restore sovereignty to his stolen kingdom. And so, the prince of seventeen years said nothing.

"Stress can kill, young man," Ardyn sighed, just a bit melodramatically."You've been withdrawn for far too long, Ravus. Whatever feelings you're penning up, thinking you're too strong or manly to let them show, you need an outlet for them."

The prince's thoughts again turned to the king of Lucis, who'd allowed this year of horrors and torment to befall his ally's children. Ravus hadn't even received so much as a letter of condolence from a Lucis secretary. "I highly doubt that a consuming need to commit regicide is a feeling one should freely express."

Ardyn softly chuckled at the appropriateness of the crime's name. "Rage, my lad," he offered. "Referring to it as rage is far less likely to raise suspicions or questions."

Strangely, the lack of admonishment for bringing up a want to _kill a king_ allowed Ravus to relax. If just a little.

Ardyn's eyes left the road ahead to flicker the young man's way for an instant.

"Ravus," he tested, "what do you remember, from that day?"

A slow, heavy sigh filled and left Ravus' lungs, as the wind flowing throughout the open convertible whipped through neatly trimmed ash blond hair.

"There was a panic," Ravus said. "Soldiers. I felt a pain in my arm. I was shot. After that... I just... I just know there was fire. But... there was really nothing else, until the Niff army was there, and Mother's body was being taken away. Regis was gone by then. He ran away. He ran away and he just left us there."

"That's _all_ you remember?" Ardyn asked again.

"Is there more?" Ravus questioned back.

"No," Ardyn sighed. "That matches to other statements I've seen. I supposed I was simply hoping to glean some reason for Regis to conduct himself so disgracefully, but that matter appears to be no clearer."

"He's a coward," Ravus grumbled, as he sank back against his seat. "A bastard, at any rate. He only came to Tenebrae to heal that worthless son of his. Once he got what he came for, he left the rest of us to die. He has two arms, does he not? He could've taken Luna. She'd have been spared the aftermath and been safe in Lucis, even if I couldn't be with her. He could've sent for us to be brought to Lucis, by now. And has he? Cares so much about his son's precious prophecy, that he'd just leave the Oracle behind? Not even correspondence to ask us how we've been? He's no ally of Tenebrae, no king. He's a fraud on a throne."

"That's remarkably insightful, for one so young," Ardyn agreed.

"Perhaps he knows better than to speak to me now," Ravus growled. "I swear to the Six, I'd kill him."

The corners of Ardyn's mouth twitched in barely concealed amusement.

"Vengeance is so often a long game, Nox Fleuret," he said. "Are you willing to play it, and see it through?"

"To see through... what, exactly?" Ravus asked.

Ardyn shrugged a shoulder. "You've been in Niflheim more than a year, now. You've been privy to the talk throughout Gralea. How Iedolas has dreamed all his life of restoring Solheim. How that dream would require every nation on Eos to come under imperial rule again. Including Lucis."

"It would," Ravus conceded, noncommittally.

"Nations don't often turn themselves over to another government, my lad," Ardyn continued. "When they don't, a strong military is needed to... persuade them. There's yet time enough that when Iedolas is ready to persuade Lucis, you could well be one of the top brass, giving the order for Regis to surrender, or perish."

"...I?"

"What a sweet vengeance it could be, Ravus," Ardyn said wistfully. "For Regis to lose everything that you and Lunafreya were abandoned for, to the very child he abandoned. A child who in spite of his betrayal grew into a fine soldier, a leader of armies. With enough trust, enough good faith over the years, Iedolas might even install you, personally, as the Lucis territory's prime minister. You, a soldier of honor, seeking only justice for your family, could administer it by your own hand."

"What I want is Tenebrae," Ravus interjected, "Iedolas can make Insomnia his winter home, for all I care."

"Hmm," Ardyn pondered. "Who's to say he won't restore Tenebrae to you, as gratitude for faithful service? He needs the assurance of loyalty, Ravus; the knowledge that the Aldercapts will rule over Solheim once more, and that those he allows to govern its many pieces aren't going to mount a mutiny, at their first opportunity. If you so love your homeland, my lad, that's fine. You needn't be loyal to Niflheim, itself, but to the Empire. Willingly joining Iedolas' army would be an ideal first show of faith, to that end."

"I supposed it might," Ravus said quietly.

"It could also be an outlet for you," Ardyn added. "All your rage and thirst for vengeance, channeled into your missions, your training. You could again sleep, deeply and peacefully, tired from the honest work of your exertions and accomplishments, instead of the listless days of inertia that drag by. You'd have an earned salary, like any other officer, and wouldn't feel any sense of debt to Iedolas for providing for you. You wouldn't even be starting out with the common footsoldiers, Ravus. I know you'd been training in fencing, to great success. A short period to bring you up to speed on protocol, and you'd no doubt enter the ranks as a sergeant, at the least."

"It... all sounds reasonable," Ravus granted.

"You have potential that Regis was too blind to see," Ardyn said. "You could become a great warrior, Ravus. You could return to the head of Tenebrae as a legend, ready to lead his people."

Ravus braced his elbow on the top of the door, and lightly tapped a knuckle to his lips as he thought the proposal over.

"Who better to protect your sister, than a high commander that no one in their right mind would dare challenge?"

"It's a lot to think about," Ravus said.

"Of course," Ardyn agreed. "And you needn't make up your mind, just yet."

The car slowed and stopped on the side of the dirt road, just before a simple but well constructed boardwalk became visible. Its path was a series of broad arcs that wound between sparsely scattered and vividly painted cottages. Somewhere in the distance, the boardwalk became steps that hugged to rocky cliffs and enabled guests to reach a private stretch of Galdin beach.

"Where are we?" Ravus asked, as he looked over the view.

"A tiny little village of vacation rentals," Ardyn said. "Quite exclusive. It's practically a ghost town, in fact. Only one's occupied, for the next week. A very private paradise, for a young man willing to use it."

Ravus' eyes shifted to the chancellor.

"You'll know which is yours," Ardyn assured him. "You'll find ample provisions in the cupboards. There's a ferry to the hotel at every noon and six, if you'd rather eat there. The costs are covered."

"What is all of this?"

"A lifetime's devotion to the military is not a decision to be made rashly," Ardyn explained, "but a decision will need to be made. If you're going to join willingly, it's now or never, as they say. So, for seven days, you can think it over in peace. Call your sister, if you wish to speak to her, but don't feel guilty if you're too occupied."

"Occupied by what?" Ravus asked, as he exited the convertible and closed the door behind him.

"By _whom_ ," Ardyn grinned in correction, as he put his car in reverse and prepared to leave the young prince on his own. "There's more than one release for stress and aggression. And I think you'll find someone very receptive to helping you explore them all."

\---------------

[Source Comic](http://landofdoom.tumblr.com/post/162582857737/ffxv-rare-pair-weekravusxsafayday-1-song-based)

**Author's Note:**

> Continued in the 'Summer (the First Time) comic, on my landofdoom tumblr.


End file.
